TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --
A former Green Beret with three Bronze Stars and two
Purple Hearts spoke recently at Tinker Air Force Base about surviving
catastrophic combat injuries and losing fellow soldiers in battle.
Retired Army Capt. Santiago “Angel” Rodriguez, currently a
customer account specialist for the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation in
Richmond, Va., spoke to groups across the base as part of Tinker’s Integrated
Delivery Services storytelling outreach to help build Airman resiliency.
The retired Special Forces member spoke about his 11
deployments to Afghanistan, Africa and Iraq. In Iraq, 30 days before the team
he commanded was scheduled to leave there, “a truck bomb exploded in front of
me,” Mr. Rodriguez said last month.
“We got attacked. A car drove in front of our team and
broke our security lines. That explosion pushed me a hundred meters back. Out
of that I suffered TBI (traumatic brain injury) and a spinal cord injury.”
Despite his injuries, Mr. Rodriguez was energized by a
rush of adrenaline. He fired at the enemy and killed two enemy combatants.
After he began turning his attention to the scene of the explosion, he himself
was shot.
“Because I was running out of energy, that pretty much
knocked me out completely,” Mr. Rodriguez said.
That wasn’t Mr. Rodriguez’s last encounter with major
combat injuries. After hospitalization at the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical
Center, Germany, he returned to Iraq as the commander of the 242nd Mountain
Team.
The next attack also happened in convoy. An EFP – an
explosively formed projectile designed to penetrate armor – ripped into the
vehicle ahead of him, killing three team members.
“That attack until this day haunts me,” he said, “because
at first I was blaming myself. I was in the first vehicle and I told myself I
didn’t even see it. They train us to see something (in combat), be a detective.
As years pass by, I started accepting it was not my fault. They were just
really good at what they were doing.”
Mr. Rodriguez was shot again during that attack. He
received burns from the blast and more spinal cord injuries. He spent two years
in hospitals recovering. He was temporarily physically unable to walk or to
speak with his wife and two small children. During that time, he “caved down”
with PTSD (post- traumatic stress disorder), anger and depression, he said.
During his presentation, Mr. Rodriguez was engaging and
often humorous. His outward appearance doesn’t tell the whole story of his
continuing struggles.
“What you guys see is not what I reflect,” Mr. Rodriguez
said. “What is inside me is not reflecting to the outside. I’m in pain every
day. I’m pretty much blind out of my left eye. I don’t see nothing out of my
left eye anymore. That’s because of the brain swelling back then.
“On my right side I get unbalanced, but not that much
anymore because I go through therapy every other week at the VA hospital.”
Mr. Rodriguez said his hospital therapy teams pushed him
physically and mentally to recover. His wife (they were high school
sweethearts) and children ultimately inspired him to heal for them, he said.
Out of the hospital, though, Mr. Rodriguez began drinking
heavily. “I did not want to remember. That’s why I was doing it. I was not confronting
myself and the memories that I was having.”
Mr. Rodriguez’s military friends confronted him about his
drinking and lack of communication. They urged him to start talking more about
his feelings and experiences. He took their advice, recovered and now regularly
speaks at colleges, hospitals and military installations about his mental and
physical challenges as a former combat soldier.
Mr. Rodriguez said his senior noncommissioned officer, who
died in battle, inspired him, too. His NCO “schooled” Mr. Rodriguez every day
to learn how to be a better officer. Having survived and having to overcome
huge personal obstacles, Mr. Rodriguez said “in the back of my mind I was
thinking about my senior NCO. What would he tell me?”